Graphic 1: Meuse River Lizard Biting onto Turtle Prey
Source:Click Here Introduction
The Meuse River Lizard, or commonly called as the Mosasurus, is a sea animal that is from the reptile family. It's scientific Latin name is the Tylosaurus Proiger. Though it does not seem to clearly link to the frilled necked lizard, there are many different qualities the two share, like being cold blooded, having competition over food, a method of being able to run away from predators easily etc. This animal came to be extinct during the Cretaceous Era, where most dinosaurs had became extinct due to some natural phenomenon.
Scientific Classification
Kingdom:
Animalia
Phylum:
Chordata
Class:
Sauropsida
Order:
Squamata
Suborder:
Lacertilia
Family:
Mosasauridae
Subfamily:
Mosasaurinae
Genus:
Mosasaurus
Habitat
The Mosasaurus, also commonly known as the Meuse River Lizards, lived during in the Late Cretaceous, which was around 80 million years ago. During that period, it was basically the time that ended the dinosaur race. Though during that time before the Mosasaurus went extinct, it lived at where today it is called Central America. To be more exact, it lived in the shallow waters of Central America, where it fits many of its living requirements.
Graphic 2: Location of where the Mosasaurus lived in today's map.
Mosasaurus have way of life in living in the shallow waters. Since many marine animals live up in the shallow waters, they prefer to hunt on many animals that lived up. But there has many theories saying whether they hunted animals bigger than them on the shallow waters since by the size of their jaws. But from their quick speed in swimming, they are able to adapt with catching their prey and feeding on them quickly rather than resting at a certain area to slowly take in their meal like humans.
When compared to the frilled necked lizard, it started off living in the water rather than on land. This is because it had a body made to swim and live in the ocean rather than the land. But that’s not the only reason, at that time, there was less strong and massive predators in the sea than on land. As a result, the Mosasaurus might have decided to live in the ocean to avoid less massive dinosaur predators.
Graphic 4: Possible Living environment for the Mosasaurus
It’s been able to move around in its habitat with its smooth body to glide around in the body, though it’s always has been guessed that they had rough skin with scales like the Saltwater Crocodile.The Mosasaurus has been said to have a very long body and 4 limbs being flippers that help the user to swim around in its natural habitat also, it has a more suitable body than the Ancient Green Sea Turtle, which had more of an leg as its limbs rather than flippers.
Behavioral 1:
The Mosasaurus has a particular love for eating marine animals in the sea rather than vegetation under the sea. This would include sharks, fish, turtles, ammonites, etc. It has this necessity to aim at other animals and not eating as much vegetation since eating meat and being omnivorous, since it these types of food will be able to actually supply enough energy for Mosasaurus to keep living on and be able to keep on surviving. Though if they ate more vegetation, they won’t be able to gain enough energy to live on and would have extinct at a much earlier rate. Their love for this kind of food is similar to the frilled necked lizard, but not saying that the both have the same diet but the 2 being omnivorous.
Behavioral 2:
This animal only likes to dive into the shallow waters, rather than into the deep waters. It has a natural instinct knowing that the deeper into the water, the more strong predators there will be. And to avoid creating more predators catching them, they stay in the shallow waters to avoid those predators like the Aetiocetus. Though it’s main reason in living in shallow waters is because its able to already to find most of its diet up there like fish, turtles etc.
Though another reason of staying up in shallow waters allow it to have a better sense of vision, since its vision is quite poor and if it goes down into the ocean, it might be easily attacked by enemies with its lack of good eyesight and lack of light being able to reach down to the bottom of the sea. The light from the sun will surely be able to help the Mosasaurus be able to find its way around and be able to catch animals easily up in the shallow waters.
Structural 1:
Its strong flippers have an important use since the Mosasaurus really depends on them to live. It uses these flippers to help it get around easily since it can’t really live in its habitat without flippers. Though having those strong flippers, which have strong big limb bones in them, help it swim and escape easily if a predator has came to catch it.
It needed theses strong flippers to quickly be able to swim away and catch prey before some other marine animal takes it before itself. Because of the strong competition over food, many animals though over getting food so the Mosasaurus was definitely required to be able to catch preys faster than other animals to be able to fill its daily appetite.
Structural 2:
The size of the Mosasaurus has one reached up to 15m, which was the longest recorded, found by scientists who measured the length of the bones of the extinct Mosasaurus that have already became fossils. Its immense size of up to 15m is needed to help it fight of smaller sized than itself animals so that it’ll be able to fight off animal by itself rather than having to escape all the time. The necessity of having the Mosasaurus being aggressive was that the environment was full of predators with different abilities to fight of other animals, so the Mosasaurus needed the ability being aggressive and big to fight of other animals and predators away.
Physiological Adaptation:
Like the frilled necked lizard, it’s also cold blooded, being ectotherm. These animals also rely on the sun to be able to regain some partial energy that helps them control their body temperature. Also, it is cold blooded to stay in the water 24 hours and be able to be always standby and ready to catch food that it needs.
Another good advantage from having this is that it does not need extra control in body temperature, since its impossible to gain any other physical control to help control body temperature in the water unless it occasionally goes back up to the ocean surface to regain warmth, which is a waste of time and could be easily targeted by predators like that.
Graphic 6: Jaw Fragment Fossils of the Mosasaurus (1)
Extinct Pressure:
The Mosasaurus was extinct during the Late Cretaceous, which was around 65 million years ago.. It was believed that most animals died out during that time, which was theorized that some catastrophic event like an eruption, and asteroid hitting Earth, must have caused a mass extinction of the dinosaur race. It was most likely that during the catastrophic event must have made most animals extinct and many natural vegetation and animals to die. This would have resulted in a stronger competition over food. Though the Mosasaurus was stronger than most marine animals, it might have not been able to find enough food to eat on since of the mass extinction. So it was likely that it died out because lack of food during the mass extinction.
[★] Meuse River Lizard [★]
Graphic 1: Meuse River Lizard Biting onto Turtle Prey
Introduction
The Meuse River Lizard, or commonly called as the Mosasurus, is a sea animal that is from the reptile family. It's scientific Latin name is the Tylosaurus Proiger. Though it does not seem to clearly link to the frilled necked lizard, there are many different qualities the two share, like being cold blooded, having competition over food, a method of being able to run away from predators easily etc. This animal came to be extinct during the Cretaceous Era, where most dinosaurs had became extinct due to some natural phenomenon.
Scientific Classification
Habitat
The Mosasaurus, also commonly known as the Meuse River Lizards, lived during in the Late Cretaceous, which was around 80 million years ago. During that period, it was basically the time that ended the dinosaur race. Though during that time before the Mosasaurus went extinct, it lived at where today it is called Central America. To be more exact, it lived in the shallow waters of Central America, where it fits many of its living requirements.
Graphic 2: Location of where the Mosasaurus lived in today's map.
Graphic 3: Central America Ocean (Where the Mosasaurus could have been living) (Habitat Image)
Mosasaurus have way of life in living in the shallow waters. Since many marine animals live up in the shallow waters, they prefer to hunt on many animals that lived up. But there has many theories saying whether they hunted animals bigger than them on the shallow waters since by the size of their jaws. But from their quick speed in swimming, they are able to adapt with catching their prey and feeding on them quickly rather than resting at a certain area to slowly take in their meal like humans.
When compared to the frilled necked lizard, it started off living in the water rather than on land. This is because it had a body made to swim and live in the ocean rather than the land. But that’s not the only reason, at that time, there was less strong and massive predators in the sea than on land. As a result, the Mosasaurus might have decided to live in the ocean to avoid less massive dinosaur predators.
Graphic 4: Possible Living environment for the Mosasaurus
It’s been able to move around in its habitat with its smooth body to glide around in the body, though it’s always has been guessed that they had rough skin with scales like the Saltwater Crocodile.The Mosasaurus has been said to have a very long body and 4 limbs being flippers that help the user to swim around in its natural habitat also, it has a more suitable body than the Ancient Green Sea Turtle, which had more of an leg as its limbs rather than flippers.
Adaptations
Graphic 5: Labelled diagram of Mosasaurus
Behavioral 1:
The Mosasaurus has a particular love for eating marine animals in the sea rather than vegetation under the sea. This would include sharks, fish, turtles, ammonites, etc. It has this necessity to aim at other animals and not eating as much vegetation since eating meat and being omnivorous, since it these types of food will be able to actually supply enough energy for Mosasaurus to keep living on and be able to keep on surviving. Though if they ate more vegetation, they won’t be able to gain enough energy to live on and would have extinct at a much earlier rate. Their love for this kind of food is similar to the frilled necked lizard, but not saying that the both have the same diet but the 2 being omnivorous.
Behavioral 2:
This animal only likes to dive into the shallow waters, rather than into the deep waters. It has a natural instinct knowing that the deeper into the water, the more strong predators there will be. And to avoid creating more predators catching them, they stay in the shallow waters to avoid those predators like the Aetiocetus. Though it’s main reason in living in shallow waters is because its able to already to find most of its diet up there like fish, turtles etc.
Though another reason of staying up in shallow waters allow it to have a better sense of vision, since its vision is quite poor and if it goes down into the ocean, it might be easily attacked by enemies with its lack of good eyesight and lack of light being able to reach down to the bottom of the sea. The light from the sun will surely be able to help the Mosasaurus be able to find its way around and be able to catch animals easily up in the shallow waters.
Structural 1:
Its strong flippers have an important use since the Mosasaurus really depends on them to live. It uses these flippers to help it get around easily since it can’t really live in its habitat without flippers. Though having those strong flippers, which have strong big limb bones in them, help it swim and escape easily if a predator has came to catch it.
It needed theses strong flippers to quickly be able to swim away and catch prey before some other marine animal takes it before itself. Because of the strong competition over food, many animals though over getting food so the Mosasaurus was definitely required to be able to catch preys faster than other animals to be able to fill its daily appetite.
Structural 2:
The size of the Mosasaurus has one reached up to 15m, which was the longest recorded, found by scientists who measured the length of the bones of the extinct Mosasaurus that have already became fossils. Its immense size of up to 15m is needed to help it fight of smaller sized than itself animals so that it’ll be able to fight off animal by itself rather than having to escape all the time. The necessity of having the Mosasaurus being aggressive was that the environment was full of predators with different abilities to fight of other animals, so the Mosasaurus needed the ability being aggressive and big to fight of other animals and predators away.
Physiological Adaptation:
Like the frilled necked lizard, it’s also cold blooded, being ectotherm. These animals also rely on the sun to be able to regain some partial energy that helps them control their body temperature. Also, it is cold blooded to stay in the water 24 hours and be able to be always standby and ready to catch food that it needs.
Another good advantage from having this is that it does not need extra control in body temperature, since its impossible to gain any other physical control to help control body temperature in the water unless it occasionally goes back up to the ocean surface to regain warmth, which is a waste of time and could be easily targeted by predators like that.
Graphic 6: Jaw Fragment Fossils of the Mosasaurus (1)
Graphic 7: Jaw Fragment Fossils of the Mosasaurus (2)
Graphic 8: Skull Fragment Fossils of the Mosasaurus
Extinct Pressure:
The Mosasaurus was extinct during the Late Cretaceous, which was around 65 million years ago.. It was believed that most animals died out during that time, which was theorized that some catastrophic event like an eruption, and asteroid hitting Earth, must have caused a mass extinction of the dinosaur race. It was most likely that during the catastrophic event must have made most animals extinct and many natural vegetation and animals to die. This would have resulted in a stronger competition over food. Though the Mosasaurus was stronger than most marine animals, it might have not been able to find enough food to eat on since of the mass extinction. So it was likely that it died out because lack of food during the mass extinction.
Bibliography:
Bukisa. (2009). Extinct & Extant: World's Largest Crocodiles and Lizards Ever. Retrieved July 21st, fromhttp://www.bukisa.com/articles/81841_extinct-extant-worlds-largest-crocodiles-and-lizards-ever
Everhart. M. (2010). Just about Mosasaurus. Retrieved July 22nd, from http://www.oceansofkansas.com/about-mo.html
Strauss, B. Mosasaurus - Marine Reptile Mosasaurus Characteristics, Behavior and Habitat. Retrieved July 21st, from http://dinosaurs.about.com/od/aquaticdinosaurs/p/mosasaurus.htm
Wikipedia. (2010). Mosasaurus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved July 21st, fromhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosasaurus